Re: Borrowing Wordlist

----- Original Message -----
From: "scott" <sjcaldwell@...>


> On Oct 19, 2004, at 8:47 PM, Sally Caves wrote:
>
>> Heck, if Thorndyke and Barnhardt's Junior Dictionary of the English
>> Language
>> was good enough for me in my salad days,
>
> Salad days? I've seen this expression a few times before on the list.
> What does
> it mean? How did it originate?
I may be wrong, and I'm going entirely on feeble memory, but I think it's
from Shakespeare, and specifically from Antony and Cleopatra, a comment
Cleopatra utters.  Or, it may be from Troilus and Cressida, and a comment
Cressida utters.  The idea is that you eat the salad first in a course of
meals for dinner that hasn't changed since medieval times.  Salad, soup,
entree, second entree, dessert.  Your "salad days" have come and gone.  It's
actually a fairly common and well-worn expression; I picked it up about
eighteen years ago.

John may know.

Sally